As the 4th of July approaches, I find myself looking forward to a great holiday weekend. We have big plans involving boats, lakes, fattening foods, and fireworks. Lorna is popping out of town for a few days, and my social calendar is filled to the max.
Still, I have work to do.
I am a strong advocate of making other people’s jobs easier, even if that means giving up some of my own luxuries in the process. While I don’t expect all freelancers to agree, I can’t help but feel that if movie theaters and gas stations have to be open 24-7 as just another way of catering to their customers, shouldn’t I be doing the same?
Working on Holidays
The benefits of working from home are not always 100 percent in the freelancer’s favor. I have deadlines tomorrow that have nothing to do with the United States of America and our Independence celebrations. The clients are overseas and requested a Friday completion date. They probably aren’t aware that it’s a holiday weekend for me (although if I brought it up, I’m sure they would have worked with me to come up with an alternate solution), so I am working through the evening and into tomorrow morning before I head out for my day in the sun.
I’ve been in similar circumstances for other American- and religion-based holidays. Although I certainly have the right to avoid taking jobs that have due dates during the holidays, I usually accept them anyway.
Working through Time Zones
I’ve discovered similar drawbacks when it comes to time zones. One of my steady gigs requires a monthly phone interview. I’m in PST, and so far, all of my interviewees have been East Coasters. This has meant some pretty early morning phone calls from my end of things. Again, while most of the people have been really good about setting a time that works for me, I feel that as the freelancer (as opposed to the client), it is my responsibility to do a good job – even if that means mass quantities of coffee at an ungodly hour of the day.
Cultural Communication Barriers
I had a client from Hong Kong once who asked me to write their About Us page. They cater to a largely American audience, so most of the time, they were happy to have me stick in American-specific and pop culture references for the writing I did. For this particular project, however, I put in an esoteric tie to Close Encounters of the Third Kind – a movie they had never even heard of, let alone used for puns. It took several rewrites and quite a bit of communication before we settled on a happy medium (the pun stayed in). Although I didn’t get paid more for my additional work, I considered it part and parcel of the whole cross-cultural thing.
Do You Always Have to Compromise to Succeed?
No, not necessarily, but I like to think that my approach of meeting clients on their own turf is part of what makes me a good freelancer. We work in a world-wide community, and it would be a mistake to assume that my way is the only way.
